This page contains a list of activities for you to do at home with your child. If you have any questions or would like suggestions for activities in specific skills areas or for a special age group please email me anytime at ecrome@coolbeanstherapyclubhouse.com.
Mother’s Day Activities
- Mother’s Day Crossword
- Mother’s Day Crown works on cutting, coloring, handwriting, and eye-hand coordination.
- Mother’s Day Flowerto work on cutting, eye-hand coordination, writing, and direction following/sequencing.
The Mom Descriptors can be cut out and used decorate the crown and the flower.
More April Activities
Give the lion a haircut!
Practice cutting skills, bilateral skills, and eye-hand coordination by cutting all the lines around the lion’s face to give him a haircut. Make sure to start toward the top left corner of the paper if you’re a righty and toward the top left corner of the paper if you’re a lefty to have better control of the paper when stabilizing it. Turn the paper as you make your way around the lion’s head and make sure the hand holding the paper has the thumb on top of the paper. Your cutting hand should always have the thumb up with scissors cutting away from your body.
Positive Self-Talk Maze
Use this maze to work on visual perception skills like figure ground and spatial relations, visual attention, scanning, working memory, direction following, pencil control, and eye-hand coordination. Start at the top, left corner of the maze to search for the first letter of the positive self-talk statement above. Words can be found going in any direction, including right to left and bottom-up. Words can also switch directions mid-word; however, they do not move diagonally. Be careful and good luck completing the maze!
Pre-K Scavenger Hunt
Use this scavenger hunt to work on pre-k skills! Search for shapes, colors, numbers, and letter, and categorizing. When looking for shapes and letters, try not to be so literal and look for them in porches, sidewalk cracks, fence posts, and any items in your neighborhood that forms the letter or shape. When looking for numbers, you’ll be searching for items bunched together like 3 yellow flowers in a garden, 4 leaves next to each other, 2 dogs walking, or 1 tree by itself. When you’re looking for categories try to be as creative as possible, but make sure you put it in the right category (for example, popsicle stick on the sidewalk goes in “things that don’t belong” and a home could be a bird nest).
April Activities
Some fun activities that include writing prompts and fine motor skills:
Chore Ideas
Tomorrow, try having your child help with simple chores around the house. Chores are great for adding structure and routine to a child’s schedule. Children feel more helpful and important when they can do things independently. Honestly, chores are a great way for your child to learn and start practicing IADLs (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living) skills. IADLs are the skills you use every day, but aren’t related to your basic needs like toileting or feeding. Making a phone call, shipping a package, cleaning your room, and putting laundry away are all examples of IADLs. Here are a few simple chores you can add to your child’s schedule to learn responsibility, being helpful, and you’ll get some fine motor, gross motor, and visual motor skills squeezed in there, too!
Easter Activities
Here are some fun Easter activities you can do with your family.
Easter themed worksheets focusing on Visual-Motor Skills related to pencil control, eye-hand coordination, prewriting stroke, dot-to-dots, and color-by-shape:
- Easter Bunny: Eye/Hand Coordination and Pencil Control Bunny
- Easter Egg: Color by Shape
- Easter Egg: Connect-the-Dots Circle Practice
- Easter Maze: Eye/Hand Coordination and Pencil Control
- Easter Maze: Pre-writing Horizontal Line and Circle
- Easter Peep: Pre-writing Cross and X Formation
Recommended Reading for Social Development and Self-Regulation
Here’s a list of 100+ books I have personally read and recommend to read with your child for teaching Social Development and Self-Regulation skills. Books are broken down into areas such as friendships, teamwork, kindness, sharing, safety, anger management, self-control, positive thinking, growth mindset, problem solving, and more! An asterisk ( * ) in front of a book on this list indicates a book recommended for children in upper elementary through middle school.
Handwriting Practice with Weekly Menu Planning
Here are few blank weekly sample menus you can print. I like to put our weekly menu plan on white paper in an 8×10 picture frame. This way my son can use a dry erase marker to write the menu and erase it each week to write the new menu. This is a great way for your child to work on handwriting, working memory, and planning! You can help with spelling as needed, but the main idea is to work on handwriting and BONUS it helps you with your grocery list and meal prep! If you want to take meal planning a step further (especially for older children), you can have your child try to figure out what ingredients are needed for a couple of the meals.
- Weekly Menu Template – Simple Dinner Plan
- Weekly Menu Template – Dinner with Food Groups
- Weekly Menu Template – 3 Meals A Day
Another great way to work on handwriting is by having your child write the grocery list. You can tell him/her what to add to the list. Depending on your child’s age, s/he can potentially help to think of personal items needed (i.e. deodorant, body wash, toothpaste, etc.).
ABCs of Motor Regulation
The ABCs of Motor Skill Regulation is a movement program integrating yoga poses, sensory input, and motor skills. You can use this with your child to work on calming and stretching poses, as well as motor skill development related to coordination, motor planning, core strength, and balance. Some of the movement cards also provide proprioception and/or vestibular input. At the top of each card, you will see color-coded letters indicating which skill areas that card can be used for. Proprioception/Vestibular, Core/Strength, Calm/Stretch, Balance, and Motor Planning/Coordination are the main focus areas for this movement program. You might see a card that say Calm/Stretch is only noted; however, it could still provide some proprioceptive input. If Proprioceptive/Vestibular was omitted from that card, it is likely because it is not the main skill focus for that card movement.
I would not recommend attempting to use all cards in one movement session. There are 80 cards. That would be far too long to expect your child to attend. There are at least 2 cards for each letter of the alphabet. Pick and choose which cards you would like to try with your child, depending on your goal. All cards have an interesting fact related to the subject located at the top of the card. Number of potential repetitions or time to hold poses for can be found at the bottom of the card in red. If an asterisk is noted at the bottom of a card, an alternative is provided to make that particular movement more difficult or easier.
Hopefully, you enjoy the ABCs of Motor Skill Regulation!
Sensory Countdown: A Scavenger Hunt.
- For this activity your child/children will go through the house or outside to search for items from the 7 senses: auditory (sound), olfactory (smell), tactile (touch), gustatory (taste), visual (sight), proprioception (where body is in space-how much energy/work it takes your body to move), and vestibular (how & why body moves-balance/coordination of movement). The scavenger hunt is broken down into each sense with a countdown of what to find (ie. visual – 5 shiny, 4 dull, 3 multicolored, 2 big, and 1 small item).
- How to modify: You can modify the activity by having your do 1 page a day or only search 1 room or only outside. You can also have them write the items, or take pictures, or tell you what they find.You can discuss what was found and why it’s part of the category, as well.
Free Resources
This information can be found on The Pathway 2 Success website by Kristina Scully, a special education teacher. She has put together more than 100 FREE downloadable activities including mindfulness activities, Executive Functioning posters and worksheets, conversation starters, working with others, coping strategies list, calming posters, homework binder, and more!
Through Kids Master Skills you can find free downloadable information related to pencil control, sight words, and handwriting practice from Occupational Therapist, Lisa Marnell.